CVE-2025-14559
Description
A flaw was found in the keycloak-services component of Keycloak. This vulnerability allows the issuance of access and refresh tokens for disabled users, leading to unauthorized use of previously revoked privileges, via a business logic vulnerability in the Token Exchange implementation when a privileged client invokes the token exchange flow.
Statement
This vulnerability is rated Moderate for Red Hat. A business logic flaw in the Token Exchange implementation of Keycloak allows a privileged client with impersonation permission to issue access and refresh tokens for disabled users. This can lead to unauthorized access by former employees or banned users, despite their accounts being deactivated. Exploitation requires an internal high-privileged client and does not involve user interaction or direct authentication by the disabled user.
Mitigation
To mitigate this issue, disable the Token Exchange preview feature within your Keycloak deployment if it is not actively required. This can typically be achieved through Keycloak's administrative console or by adjusting relevant configuration settings. If the Token Exchange feature must remain enabled, ensure that only strictly necessary and highly trusted clients are granted the 'impersonation' permission. Any changes to Keycloak configuration may require a service restart or reload to take effect, which could temporarily impact service availability.
Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) Score Details
Info alert:Important note
CVSS scores for open source components depend on vendor-specific factors (e.g. version or build chain). Therefore, Red Hat's score and impact rating can be different from NVD and other vendors. Red Hat remains the authoritative CVE Naming Authority (CNA) source for its products and services (see Red Hat classifications).
CVSS v3 Score Breakdown
| Red Hat | NVD | cve.org | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Base Score | 6.5 | N/A | 6.5 |
| Attack Vector | Network | N/A | Network |
| Attack Complexity | Low | N/A | Low |
| Privileges Required | High | N/A | High |
| User Interaction | None | N/A | None |
| Scope | Unchanged | N/A | Unchanged |
| Confidentiality | High | N/A | High |
| Integrity Impact | High | N/A | High |
| Availability Impact | None | N/A | None |
Vector
Red Hat: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:H/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:N
cve.org: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:H/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:N
Acknowledgements
Red Hat would like to thank Aytac Kalinci for reporting this issue.
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